From: Paul Grant (shade999@optonline.net)
Date: Sun Jul 27 2003 - 10:10:50 MDT
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-extropians@extropy.org [mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.org]
On Behalf Of Giu1i0 Pri5c0
Sent: Sunday, July 27, 2003 5:56 AM
>I think it is a feedback loop, thought defines language and in turn
language constrains thought, at least when you think with words. I don't
think the effect is very strong when you compare similar languages. I
spoke only one language (Italian) as a child, so most of the times I
think in that language. I know some other languages (English Spanish and
French, all indo-european languages) well enough to think in them when I
am speaking them, and I do not notice any significant difference. But I
am sure that if I could speak Chinese well enough to think in Chinese
when speaking Chinese, I would notice significant differences in my
thought patterns. At least this is what fluent speakers of two very
different languages (e.g. a child whose two mother languages are English
and Chinese) say.
I think its through an availability mechanism; I speak Arabic and
English fluently,
and certain thoughts or mechanisms are very difficult to "translate"
semantically
(ergo there exists no corresponding word or short phrase in the other
language).
In any event, I don't think that a language in and of itself necessarily
limits
thought development; however it can delay it.... Sufficiently
intelligent people
come up with new words all the time in their day-to-day dealings [that
map
to something significant missing from their current semantic
set].....And eventually
it filters down to the masses. Put another way, knowing several
languages
expands ur ability to capture a thought precisely {and thus is highly
recommended};
knowing one language does not necessarily hinder that development of a
thought,
just delays it. And that goes for radically different languages (like
English or
Chinese), in that left to their own devices, the English and Chinese
would eventually
identify all the notions they want... The order in which a particular
semantic notion
is discovered however, would probably be vastly different in such
extremes.
omard-out
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